Today, we are going to talk about sleep. Sleep is one of the most important parts of a training program, yet one that is often overlooked. Let’s put aside fitness for a quick second and look at sleep benefits from all assets:

Helps maintain a higher basal metabolic rate (fat-burning).

Helps improve cognitive behavior (decision making).

Helps decrease anxiety.

Helps maintain a heathy immune system.

So, in short, sleeping 8 hours a night will help you lose weight, make better decisions, keep you from going crazy and keep you from getting sick. Still looking for that magic pill? I think it may be called going to bed at a reasonable hour.

So how does this help your fitness levels?

Along with all the benefits listed above. One of the major benefits of sleep is that it triggers your body to release certain hormones (growth hormone) that are essential for recovery. What do these hormones do? They help your muscles, tendons and ligaments recover from the abuse we put them through every day.

So now that I have beat it into you how important sleep is, let’s talk about ways you can get more.

Get a better bed. Tossing and turning throughout the night can and will inhibit your natural sleep cycle. Not having the ability to properly enter and exit your REM sleep, will affect your energy levels and recovery between sessions. My best suggestion is getting a bed that you find comfortable and will help you sleep throughout the night. Personally, this past year I invested in the Loom and Leaf mattress, which is a high quality mattress sold at a reasonable price. Game changer.

Down Regulate. Let your body down regulate. Try to avoid using blue light as it gets closer to bed time. Switch TV for a book or a magazine. If you have to work on your computer late into the night I recommend downloading the app Flux for your computer. What this app does is automatically change the color of your screen to be easier on your eyes as the sun comes down. It’s great.

Track Sleep. Do you have trouble falling asleep? Sleeping through the night? Well, another app called Sleep Cycle can tell you exactly when you are waking up, how long it takes you to go back to bed and how deep of a sleep you are getting in. This information can be very useful to identifying the problems we are having with our sleep. Sometimes we just have to understand why and fix it.